Black Pro-Life Leaders: Santorum ‘Absolutely Right’ to Wonder How Obama Could Support Abortion

Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union (Phoro courtesy NBPLU)

(CNSNews.com) - Black pro-life leaders say they agree with former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who in an interview with CNSNews.com last week, referred to President Obama's African-American heritage and said he found it “almost remarkable” that the president could be pro-abortion.

The former senator touched off a media storm when he said that he agreed with the argument Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., made in his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail” that a just law is a manmade law that comports with the natural law or the law of God, and that he finds it “almost remarkable” that a black man like President Barack Obama would want to deny legal recognition for the human rights of an unborn child.

“I have to agree with him and say that I find it remarkable, also,” Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union in Washington, D.C., told CNSNews.com. “In light of the fact that coming out of slavery, we were not considered full human beings. We were treated as no better than pack mules, working in fields, without any rights at all.”

During the one-hour-and-40 minute interview, Santorum said that, when asked during the 2008 campaign by Pastor Rick Warren "at what point" a baby "gets human rights," President Obama was wrong to answer “(T)hat is above my pay grade.”

Santorum then said: "(T)he question is--and this is what Barack Obama didn't want to answer -- is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no. Well, if that person, human life, is not a person, then I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, no, we are going to decide who are people and who are not people."

Major news outlets, including Politico, National Journal, MSNBC, and the Daily Beast, accused Santorum of playing the “race card,” even though he was discussing human life and personhood as protected by the Constitution.

Gardner, meanwhile, said she is not surprised by the portrayal of Santorum by some media outlets.

“I think that what the media is trying to do is take what Sen. Santorum said and try to spin it to mean something else,” Gardner said.

But Gardner said if you look at what Santorum was saying in context, he is correct.

“He was talking about the Dred Scott decision – and in the Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court said that blacks were only two-thirds human; that we were not fully human beings. And I believe that (Santorum) was referring to that decision when he made that remark,” Gardner told CNSNews.com.

“If you think in terms of the fact that we have come from an enslaved past and we were considered to be less than human, you would think that (Obama) above all people would understand just exactly that unborn children are treated in the exact same way or regarded as being less than human – just because they are small or are not able to help themselves or fight for themselves,” she told CNSNews.com.

“It’s very interesting that the ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ was referenced,” Childress said. “In that same letter, Martin Luther King references infanticide or child-killing as evil. So what Martin Luther King calls evil, Barack Obama and this administration calls good -- because all of their policies have more or less facilitated the growth or the intrusion of abortion in our community and our legislation a hundred fold.”

“Before he was elected, Barack Obama said the first thing he would do – he said this on July 7th 2007 at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser -- he said the first thing he would do would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would more or less make abortion available upon demand, no restrictions, paid for by government dollars," said Childress. "Unfortunately Barack Obama, undoubtedly, is a facilitator for black genocide. What’s the irony of that? Well, Barack Obama himself is black.”

“We look at the conditions in which Barack Obama was born himself, his mother endured, and took on the challenges that were given her and did not choose to kill the child that was in her womb," said Childress. "She was abandoned by her father. She did not have any certain dwelling place. She was unquestionably unsure about her financial stability, and yet she chose to have Barack – and as, we can see, this has turned out to be something that became a historic decision to have him -- because this man is the first black president of the United States."

“It is quite hypocritical that the president would talk about change and social justice and be one of the strongest advocators of the abortion agenda in this country,” Childress told CNSNews.com.

Childress, meanwhile, said former Sen. Santorum was expressing the truth.

“Rick Santrorum undoubtedly is a person who understands that life begins at inception and he sees this as a direct platform to defend the unborn. Why? Because the Declaration of Independence decrees that there is an unalienable right that is endowed by the Creator – life, liberty and the right to pursue happiness,” Childress said.

Childress said abortion takes away the rights of unborn children.

“Rick Santorum is saying, basically, that the civil rights of these children have been denied,” Childress told CNSNews.com. “They have been disenfranchised from the American dream.

“They have the right to pursue happiness – no matter what their conditions are," said Childress. "The right to pursue means I may not have it. You don’t pursue something you have. And so, if I don’t have it, I have the right to pursue it."

“Just because I’m born in Bedford-Stuy or born in the projects and my mother is single and 16 and doesn’t have an education, you don’t have the right to cut off my pursuit of happiness," said the pastor. "You don’t have that right. The Declaration says you don’t have that right. The Constitution says that these rights are for ‘us and for our posterity’ – our future children."

“The Constitution covers unborn children of future generations," he said. "We have stripped them of that right, all because in 1973 some judges, in their final analysis, said this: We do not know when life begins. Well, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on that, even though I know that’s not correct – they certainly did know, But now we can empirically prove, scientifically prove, that life begins at conception. And if that is the case, then the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution come into play. Those rights should be afforded the child and therefore, we are violating the rights of those children by dismembering them in the womb."